He was here yesterday to talk about DACA and “Dreamers“. Additional coverage is also available.
Archive for August, 2017
What Is Causing the Recent U.S. Navy Collisions?
Maybe this article from the Navy Times has the answer – Maybe today’s Navy is just not good at driving ships. This is further supported by a series of three articles published in Proceedings Today: Collisions: Part I – What Are the Root Causes?; Collisions: Part II – Operational Pause; and Collisions: Part III – Maintenance.
Required reading is the oft-cited 2010 Report of the Fleet Review Panel on Surface Force Readiness as chaired by retired Vice Admiral Philip Balisle.
Another important document is this 2010 GAO report – Navy Needs to Reassess Its Metrics and Assumptions for Ship Crewing Requirements and Training as is this 2017 report – Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Maintain Viable Surge Sealift and Combat Logistics Fleets. Other GAO investigations on the Navy can be found here.
Numerous Congressional hearings on fleet readiness are also available online.
One should peruse this 2017 CRS report – Defining Readiness: Background and Issues for Congress
What Role Did Online Media Play in the 2016 Presidential Elections?
Here is a major report from the Berkman Center – Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election – that states “We find that the structure and composition of media on the right and left are quite different. The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism”(abstract) Other reports of interest include: Social Media and Fake News in 2016 Election (Stanford); Did Social Media Ruin Election 2016? (NPR); Election 2016: Campaigns as a Direct Source of News (Pew); and Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda (Columbia Journalisn Review)’
“Alt” Terms Defined
This New York Times article discusses some the terms being freely tossed around of late.
List of Additional K-Mart Stores Closing (Two in New Jersey) As Announced on August 24, 2017
The official list can be found here.
What Books Do Highly Ranked Military Officers Read?
Please look at this list from the new book, The Leader’s Bookshelf. You might be surprised to find Isaac Asimov (it certainly has been his week in this blog) is listed as well as Patrick O’Brian (Among my all-time favorite authors. He wrote like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and those are both authors of whom I just can’t get enough.) P.S. I have read 30 of the 50.
Transportation, Logistics, and Distribution in New Jersey
The TLD (transportation, logistics, and distribution) sector is impacting the state’s economy in a meaningful way according to the New Jersey Bureau of Labor Market Information’s 2017 report – New Jersey’s Transportation, Logistics & Distribution Industry Cluster. Some findings from this document are:
“In 2015, transportation, logistics & distribution employed 370,260 workers in New Jersey. The cluster employed 11.2 percent of the state’s private sector workers. Nationally, TLD accounts for just 8.8 percent of private sector employment.
The annual average New Jersey private sector wage for TLD in 2015 was $73,325. Total wages for the TLD cluster accounted for 13.2 percent of private sector wages statewide.
TLD contributed more than $56.8 billion to the state’s Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP -chained 2009 dollars) in 2015, the fourth highest dollar amount per state nationwide. New Jersey accounted for more than four percent of the nation’s GDP generated from TLD.”(5)
So critical is TLD to New Jersey’s economy that the state’s Employment and Training Commission has identified this sector as one of six sectors key to the future economic and workplace development of this state. And New Jersey Career Connections has a separate page for TLD that includes the various credentialing agencies in this field.
Additional news on this subject can be found at:
NJ Strives to Stay Ahead in Transportation, Logistics, and Distribution (NJ Spotlight); What is ‘TLD,’ and why might it be some NJ kids’ best shot at success in life? (NJ 101.5.com); and NJ becoming the warehouse state, and that means more jobs (Asbury Park Press).
This choose.nj.com site offers compelling reasons why New Jersey is an TLD hub.
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“Global Trends in Terrorism: 1970-2016”
This major study by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, after accounting for discrepancies in data sources, states:
“As for the data presented, the figures and graphs for 1970-2016 do reflect several broad trends that are undoubtedly real and accurate. They show a major shift from a more broadly distributed pattern of global terrorism to one driven by Islamic extremism and internal instability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with a sharp rise beginning in the mid-2000s and becoming a key threat in these regions after 2011.” (9-10)
While this report does not specifically address domestic terrorism in the United States by utilizing that term, it does present troubling figures on the occurrence of hate crimes. (pp.65-68)
The report is buttressed by numerous graphs and charts and ends with an illuminating section on Sources, Analytic Cautions and Challenges.
Online Primary Sources: “Documents on German Foreign Relations”
As World War II was coming to a close, literally tons of documents from the German Foreign Ministry were seized. A joint commission comprised of scholars and editors from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France was formed with the object of evaluating what documents were important enough to be published as a record of Germany’s foreign policy from the late 19th century until WWII. That was too daunting a process so the revised focus was on documents illustrating the run-up to hostilities, primarily around the years 1939 to 1941. This was undertaken and over the course of the years, 1949-1964, “Series D” was published in thirteen volumes. (Read the prefaces to the individual volumes for a more complete history of this project.)
Here are the volumes currently available online:
1 (From Neurath to Ribbentrop, September 1937 – September 1938)
2 (Germany and Czechoslovakia, 1937-1938)
3 (Germany and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939)
4 (The Aftermath of Munich, October 1938 – March 1939)
5 (Poland, Balkans, Latin America, June 1937 – March 1939)
6 (The Last Months of Peace, March – August, 1939)
7 (The Last Days of Peace, August 9 – September 3, 1939)
8 (The War Years, September 4 – March 3, 1940)
9 (The War Years, March 18 – June 22, 1940)
10 (The War Years, June 23 – August 31, 1940)
11 (The War Years, September 1940 – January 31, 1941. Analytical index only.)
12 (The War Years, February 1 – June 22, 1941)
13 (The War Years, June 23 – December 11, 1941)
“Series C” that deals with the years 1933-1937 started producing volumes in 1957; there are six volumes in total. Online versions are:
1 (The Third Reich: First Phase, January 30 – October 14, 1933)
3 (The Third Reich: First Phase, June 14, 1934 – March 31, 1935)
4 (The Third Reich: First Phase, April 1, 1935 – March 4, 1936)
6 (The Third Reich: First Phase, November 11, 1936 – November 14, 1937)
Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates
Speaking of Isaac Asimov, these debates are hosted by the American Museum of Natural History and moderated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. They are certainly worth a listen.
The Best Eclipse Story Ever Written
In fact, it is considered one of the all-time great science fiction stories, penned by a twenty-one year-old who still worked in his family’s candy store in Brooklyn. I am talking about Nightfall by Isaac Asimov. You can check here to see how many times it has been re-published and in what languages. Here is the Guardian’s take on this story. (I have fond recollections of meeting Dr Asimov as he strolled down 5th Avenue sporting his cowboy hat and string tie. I had the dubious honor of almost running the Good Doctor over when he crossed a street in mid-town without looking.)
West Side Campus Moving Forward – August 18, 2017 Report
This laudatory article from Jersey Digs highlights the quickness of this development, especially compared to its neighbor across Route 440 – Bayfront.
Live Broadcasts of the August 21, 2017 Solar Eclipse
Please come to this site for various options. The Guarini Library will be showing coverage of this event starting at noon in the Machuga Technology Center.
How To Find Civil War Historical Markers and Monuments
There is no comprehensive site that lists every single memorial, but there are certain sites/publications that allow one access to thousands of them: The Landscape of Civil War Commemoration(Slate.com) provides an interactive map leading to hundreds of sites; The Historical Marker Database can be searched by topic or state; Save Our Sculpture database (Smithsonian) can be searched by keyword or designated topics; The Civil War: Search for Monuments is an incomplete but growing database from the National Parks Service; and the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center – Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy – is self-explanatory.
Full Text of Study Highlighting Hostile Workplace Environments
My rule of thumb is that whenever you hear about reports, studies, papers, surveys, etc, always try to get your hands on the original copy. Why trust secondhand sources? The title is Working Conditions in the United States: Results of the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey published by the RAND Corporation. Some of the key findings:
- The clear majority of Americans (eight out of ten) have steady and predictable work throughout the year, but many fewer work the same number of hours on a day-to-day basis (54 percent).
- Nearly three-fourths of Americans report either intense or repetitive physical exertion on the job at least one-quarter of the time.
- More than one-half of Americans report exposure to unpleasant and potentially hazardous working conditions.
- Nearly one in five American workers are exposed to a hostile or threatening social environment at work.
- Most Americans (two-thirds) frequently work at high speeds or under tight deadlines, and one in four perceives that they have too little time to do their job
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Jersey City’s Past, Present and Future Skyscrapers
This very informative article from nj.com reviews the current state of the city’s tallest buildings along with future plans and a throwback to when skyscrapers in Jersey City towered up to eight stories; the article is replete with photos. Please visit the Jersey City Skyscraper Map for an interactive look at this building boom. This article – The best views from Jersey City’s 8 new skyscrapers– acts a colorful supplement.
Glen Campbell’s Twenty Essential Songs
As compiled by Rolling Stone (with accompanying performance videos). For those not familiar with his music, these selections will show you how influential and important he was. Not a bad one in the bunch.
Climate Change Is Already Affecting Us
The Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) states that “Evidence for a changing climate abound, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. Thousands of studies by tens of thousands of scientists around the world have documented changes….Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities…are primarily responsible for recent observed climate changes.”(11) Past, present and future impacts on the United States and the world are found on pp.13-14.
This version of the document is its third draft; the fifth draft, fundamentally unchanged from its predecessor, is at the White House, waiting approval for release. A review of this report was undertaken by the National Academies of Sciences that found “The Committee agrees that the draft CSSR is largely accurate and generally represents the breadth of available literature pertaining to the state of the science at the time of writing, with the exception of some specific topic areas detailed in this report.”(5) The CSSR is part of the fourth iteration of the National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally mandated review of climate due out every four years, the next to be delivered in late 2018.
In a related development, The Guardian has just published a series of emails detailing how the term “weather extremes” is to be used rather than “climate change” within parts of the Department of Agriculture. Other euphemisms are also indicated. This follows a similar pattern at the EPA.
NJCU in the News – August 7, 2017
There have been two mentions of NJCU in the news over the last couple of days. One involves NJCU housing a permanent exhibition highlighting the life and career of Mayor Glenn Cunningham; the other talks about leasing retail space at the West Campus location (it includes a restaurant!).
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 